


Outside The Comfort Of Innocence

by Annide



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Child Abuse, Children, Domestic Violence, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 22:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1958973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annide/pseuds/Annide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hotch: "You were just responding to what you learned, Vincent. When you grow up in an environment like that, an extremely abusive, violent household... it's not surprising that some people grow up to become killers."<br/>Vincent Perotta: "Some people?"<br/>Hotch: "What's that?"<br/>Vincent Perotta: "You said 'some people grow up to become killers'."<br/>Hotch: "And some people grow up to catch them."<br/>From 1x08, Natural Born Killers</p><p>As a kid, Emily Prentiss and her family move in next door to the Hotchners. Hotch and Prentiss grow up best friends, but a dark secret brings the real world into their childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outside The Comfort Of Innocence

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this planning on doing a nice fluff with no other purpose than to be cute. I don't know what happened, but I failed considerably.

                Aaron Hotchner was 5 years old when the Prentisses moved next door. He was so happy when he learned they had a child his age. He enjoyed playing with his little brother, but it wasn't the same. Sean was too young to like the same games Aaron did. Turned out the Prentiss kid was a little girl named Emily and she got the room with the window aligned to Aaron's. The two houses were close to one another and after they introduced each other on the sidewalk, the children started knocking on the other's window, simply using a stick, whenever they wanted to play and they'd meet in one of their yards. Growing up, they installed a cord between their windows with a soup can on each end so they could talk to each other even when they were grounded.

                One afternoon, when they were 9 years old, Aaron wouldn't answer his friend's calls. She kept tapping on his window but nothing happened, as if he weren't there, but she knew he was in his room, she'd seen him walk past the window earlier. Worried, Emily went out on her window sill and reached for a tree that was growing between both houses. She climbed on it and crossed the space separating her residence from her neighbours'. She opened the boy's window, which wasn't locked, because unlike Emily's mom his parents didn't think some criminal would actually use this as a way in. Once inside, finding Aaron was easy. He was lying on his bed, crying. Emily approached him and sat by his side.

"Hotch, what's wrong?"

"Go away." The boy turned, shielding himself from her. But Emily wouldn't just leave. Her friend looked like he needed her and she wasn't about to abandon him, even if he asked her a hundred times.

"I'm not leaving you alone. Tell me why you're crying, maybe I can help you feel better."

                But she couldn't. Aaron knew it. He didn't want her to learn his darkest secret. What if she saw his demons and decided she didn't want to be his friend anymore? He didn't want to take the risk of losing his best friend in the whole world.

"You can't. There's nothing you can do. Just leave me alone, don't you have any other friends you can go bother?"

                The boy's purposely hurtful tone joined with an angry push finally did it. Emily ran away from him, tears in her eyes. It was a year later when she learned the truth. Aaron hadn't been at school that day and when Emily came back home after classes, she found him sitting on her window sill. He was wearing, as he often did, a long-sleeved shirt despite the warm May weather. When he saw her, he stood up, put his arms around her and let himself cry on her shoulder. Emily had seen him cry hundreds of times since that afternoon when she used the tree as a bridge for the first time, so she simply held her friend in her arms, hushing him while he let it all out. When he felt better, she listened to him telling her all about the abuse he suffered at home. She gasped when he showed her the scars and marks of beatings he took, carefully hidden under clothes unfit for the weather.

                Emily wanted to tell her parents right away, thinking they would know what to do about this situation, but Aaron made her promise not to tell anyone. They kept going around their daily life as though nothing was wrong, playing in Aaron's yard and watching movies in Emily's living room almost every day, secretly talking through the can phone after curfew. They knew everything about each other, every little detail that made them who they are, their fears, their joys, what they liked and disliked. The only thing Aaron didn't know about Emily is how much his secret was eating at her all the time, how hard it was for her to see him walk around in long sleeves all summer and not say anything.

                All that worrying didn't end when Emily finally confided in her mother months later. The young girl had finally decided to break her promise when Aaron joined her, after another missed day at school, his arm in a cast. Apparently, the boy broke it when he fell down the stairs. It took several minutes to Emily to get him to admit that he had been pushed by one of his parents after he'd tried to protect Sean from getting hurt. The young Prentiss couldn't stand the secret anymore and she ran to her mother. But Elizabeth didn't believe her. Neither did her father. Neither did anyone Emily told. She was only ten and she could see the horrors of this world. How people hurt each other without anybody doing a thing to stop it, how easy it was for adults to make it look like nothing was wrong with all the others believing them, how much simpler it was to discredit a child than it was to act against abuse, how unfair the world was.

                The situation seemed hopeless and Emily gave up trying to fix it. She spent the following years supporting her best friend, listening to Aaron and helping him hide his bruises. He felt bad for her, for what she had to go through because of him, but he was grateful that she stayed by his side and never let him go. Even when he was terrible to her, pushed to limits by everything, she was still there for him when he decided to come back, full of apologies. It seemed like she understood his pain somehow and that's what made her the friend anyone would've wished for.

                It went on like this until they were 14. Emily was late from class one afternoon, because she'd gotten detention but her mother didn't know that. Mrs Prentiss went to the Hotchners' house to ask if they knew where she was. Sean let her in and left to go get his brother upstairs. But Aaron wasn't upstairs. The youngest Hotchner had just gone when Elizabeth heard his brother's voice coming from down the hall. She followed the sound to the kitchen and stopped right there, frozen by what she saw. Because what she saw was Aaron falling to the floor from the strength of a slap he'd just received. What she saw was how mistaken she had been not to believe her daughter when she'd confided in her and asked her to help her friend. What she saw was how self-absorbed she had been to not notice anything was wrong with the boy who spent most of his time at her house.

                Social services were at the Hotchners the next morning. Aaron and Emily sat on the sidewalk, waiting for them to finish talking with his parents. They were taking him away. Sean and his brother were being sent in foster care. It was time for goodbyes. Emily just stared at her best friend, tears in her eyes, not knowing what to say. She knew it was for the best, but she was incredibly sad to lose someone she was so close to. She would miss him so much. When she looked down, Aaron palmed her cheek and made her look back at him.

"I have your phone number, Em. I'll call you all the time, we won't lose contact, I promise you. We'll always be friends."

                He leaned in and kissed her. He hadn't planned it. It just happened. But it felt natural, like it was always meant to happen. They realised they weren't just friends anymore and somehow it made sense. They knew everything about each other and appreciated all the good and bad things of one another. Somewhere along the road, they had become more than friends without even noticing a change and this realisation was what reassured them that they would always figure out a way to keep in touch. And on that first kiss, sweet and warm, they said goodbye, until someday, surely, they'd be reunited.

**Author's Note:**

> I know nothing about how social services and foster care works so it's possible it went unrealistically fast, but that wasn't really the point of the story.


End file.
